According to WaPo, it took weeks of complex backroom dealing involving two key senators, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, former rivals in the Republican presidential primaries to end their hold on the Jacobson nomination.

As part of the deal, the State Department will have to produce 40 new reports a year on issues as diverse as Hong Kong autonomy, religious freedom and anti-Semitism. Government officials in Venezuela will face three more years of sanctions.

Security upgrades at U.S. embassies around the world will be mandated, including in war-torn countries such as Syria and Yemen, where there is no U.S. diplomatic presence now. U.S. diplomats at the United Nations will have to work to end sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers. And there will be a new push in Congress to rename the street in front of the Chinese Embassy in Washington for a prominent Chinese dissident.

Basically, the WH got a deal to get an ambassador to Mexico whose entire tenure will be shorter than the length of her 11-month confirmation wait. If she gets to Mexico this month, that will give the new ambassador barely six months to settle in Mexico City and just in time to cast her vote as an overseas voter in the 2017 presidential election. Like all presidential appointees, she will be obligated to tender her resignation on the golden hours between the election of a new president in November 2016 and when the new president is sworn into office in January 2017.

The resignations of career appointees to chiefs of mission positions are traditionally declined by the incoming administration whereas resignations of political and noncareer ambassadors are typically almost always accepted. Ms. Jacobson is a career civil servant at the State Department but is not a member of the career Foreign Service, and therefore considered a noncareer appointee. If there is a Trump WH — gosh, who knows how will ambassadorial appointments blow up — in all likelihood, noncareer appointees will be replaced with Trump’s noncareer appointees. If there is a Clinton WH, the new ambassador may be allowed to stay on like the rest of the career appointees already appointed worldwide but it’s worth noting that the Clinton world will definitely have a lengthy ambo wish list from supporters and bundlers.